“I just wanted bees. I needed bees as early in the year as possible”, John. We had this conversation just recently while discussing some of the mistakes we made early in our beekeeping career while buying bees. We did some things right. We did some things wrong.

Our biggest mistake was not paying attention to whether our bees were bred for overwintering or hygienic behavior. This was compounded by the fact that we were trying to minimize chemical use, and were not feeding.

I mentioned this before but it is worth repeating. In a perfect world full of wildflowers, uncontaminated water, and no pesticides the bees can survive nicely. But in our world where miles of corn and bees are interrupted by narrow strips of woodland, or towns and cities, the bees struggle.

Varroa mite is also something new. According to Dr Seeley, and other researchers, it has devastated the feral colonies of bees. I do not know if this is 100% in our area. Every summer we get one hive to the east of us (about 10 miles) which starts breeding small black bees. I have tried to propagate these but have never had a single hive overwinter in the last 10 years. Can these feral bees only survive in trees? (This has caused a major shift in our husbandry research as we search for clues).

It took us about 5 years to learn that a) we should only buy off of people who have been inspected and have a seller’s permit, and b) the queen matters.

What we Look for in a Queen

We had great success overwintering Russian bees, but they were very hot and our skill set was not developed enough to sustain the colonies past 3 years. We also grew tired of running from hives.

We had no success 10 years ago with Buckfast, but the Buckfast of today have are larger, travel farther to forage, and are bred with hygienic behavior.

20 Imported Buckfast Queens

We purchased 20 Buckfast queens in late April 2024.

Unfortunately, new queens are the most prone to swarm and despite our diligent attempts, we lost 50% by July and only 3/20 survived until November.  100% laid well in May, but we did notice 8 hives ‘slowing down’ in June while others still produced 2-3 ¾ frames of brood every 7-10 days. This might have been because they were poorly bred, which is a common problem with purchased, imported queens.